travelling with children

This Glastonbury virgin has plenty to learn. We’re just launching into day three, and the past two days have been a fairly band-free and easy entry into festival vibes. We’re still discovering where our wristbands get us, where the best food is, and which of the many stages fit our family aura best. The people…

Many find themselves in Doha by accident. Up until recently, Doha was a city to travel to only for business, and before they discovered the fields of gas, nobody went at all. But Qatar Airways have taken their rapid and giant leap into the top Airlines of the world, and their expanding network, impending Oneworld alliance…

The cicadas chant their summer song fortissimo, drowning the petty murmurs of urbane diners. French preschoolers clash wooden swords and shields between the roses. Mine bury their gazes in iThings, oblivious to the beauty of a thirty degree day, en vacances, en France. A plate of gently baked tomatoes sits before me, slightly split and…

When I had my first child (Lion), I lived in Abbotsford. My little factory workers’ cottage in Paterson St was 4.5km from the smacking centre of Melbourne’s CBD. This working class nook was built on blood, sweat and crime. It’s tendency to flood before the sewer system was installed in Melbourne meant that housing was…

I know, I’ve been gone for a while. I’ve been trapped in that holiday bubble, and known that as soon as I start writing about it, the visions will fall out of my mind and onto the page. In a supernatural way, I won’t exist in the Maldives anymore. My holiday will be here, on…

When I returned from Jordan, inivitably, people asked me if I enjoyed my holiday, and what my highlights were. “Amman,” I would say, “I could live there, I think…” “Oh, you went to Oman too?” They would ask. Why is that, do you think? It’s because the only place anybody seems to hear about in…

I must confess, I’m a little five-star. I think living in Dubai has done it to me – the surreal world where even mall toilets are glossy and four-star hotels have l’Occitaine toiletries to steal from the bathrooms. My husband used to tease me about it, until I dragged him down this costly path, but…

The walk is long, there’s no denying.The path is texturally treacherous rather than difficult. I find my feet slipping over ancient cobble slabs, polished with the feet and rain of hundreds of years. The soles of my shoes trap wicked prickly pebbles and my toes are covered in dust, powdered into monochrome. Wet and dark…

I’m in a womb, with three hundred siblings. It’s dim, warm, quiet. All I can hear is the rebab, as its melancholy wail reverberates off the walls surrounding us, and the occasional murmur of one of my twins. I can see just the golden pinpoints on the cool sandy floor, and diamond shards in the…